May 31st, 2013
There were only three new releases to reach the top 30 on the April 14th, 2013 edition of the DVD sales chart and none of them reached the top five. This left the top five identical to last week. The Bible: The Epic Miniseries sold 161,000 units and generated $5.29 million in sales for the week, lifting its running tallies to 597,000 units / $19.60 million.
More...
May 23rd, 2013
New releases were nearly shut out of the April 7th, 2013 edition of the DVD sales chart. That said, the one and only new release to chart was The Bible: The Epic Miniseries, which earned first place with 436,000 units / $14.31 million.
More...
May 19th, 2013
There were quite a few new releases to reach the upper echelon of the March 31st, 2013 edition of the Blu-ray sales chart. Lincoln was the best of these earning first place with 496,000 units / $14.24 million during its first week of release for a Blu-ray share of 38%. This is really good for a drama.
More...
May 19th, 2013
The week of March 31st, 2013 was a strange week on the home market, as it contained Easter weekend. Easter sales helped a lot of older releases rise on the DVD sales chart. Even so, a new release, Lincoln, led the way with 818,000 units / $15.62 million.
More...
March 27th, 2013
It is a shallow week on the home market. Lincoln is coming out and should dominate the sales chart, but after that, there's almost nothing to talk about. Given its reviews and its Awards Season success, it is the easy choice for Pick of the Week, right? Not so fast. I'm still waiting for the screener. Speaking of late reviews, Skyfall finally showed up and despite not coming out this week, or this month, I'm giving the Blu-ray Combo Pack Pick of the Week honors.
More...
January 7th, 2013
There was a pleasant surprise during the first weekend of 2013, as Texas Chainsaw 3D opened in first place with more than $20 million. Django Unchained also beat that milestone. The overall box office still fell from last weekend, down 18% to $147 million, but this is to be expected for a post-holiday weekend. It was 5.9% higher than the same weekend last year and 2013 is off to an early lead over 2012 at $253 million to $191 million. Hopefully I don't have to tell you it is way too early to pay serious attention to those numbers, but it is better to win early than fall behind.
More...
January 4th, 2013
Its the first weekend of 2013 and there is one new wide release and a previous limited release expanding semi-wide. Will either film compete for top spot? Not likely. There are some recent examples of horror films opening well in January, so Texas Chainsaw 3D could be a surprise hit, but there's also a chance it won't reach the top 5. Meanwhile, Promised Land is a message movie, but one that has limited appeal beyond those that agree with the message. This means The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will remain on top of the box office chart. If it does so, it will mean in the past nine weeks, only three films have earned first place over the weekend. 2012 got off to a strong start and last year the box office was led by The Devil Inside, which made $33.73 million. I don't think any film will make $20 million over the weekend this year, so 2013 could start off on a losing note.
More...
January 3rd, 2013
All of the final box office numbers we're going to get are in, so let's take a look at the last two weeks at the box office. There were not a lot of changes with the final numbers and no film switched places, so there's not a lot to update. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey remained in top spot in both weeks with Django Unchained in close second this weekend and Jack Reacher a distant second the weekend before. The year ended with $10.76 billion, or about 5.8% higher than last year's total and just a hair above 2009's record total.
More...
December 31st, 2012
The last news story of the year is the weekend wrap-up, but since many studios are still closed for the holidays, we are still dealing with estimates. It appears that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey won a close race for top spot just ahead of Django Unchained. Additionally, every film in the top five came within a rounding error of predictions, or was better than expected, and the overall box office was massive compared to last year. We won't have final numbers for the last two weekends till Wednesday or Thursday, so there will be a lot of catching up to do, but it is hard to complain about the results we've seen.
More...
December 30th, 2012
2012 comes to an end on a decidedly positive note for the movie industry this weekend, thanks to strong performances from three films. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will come out on top, according to studio estimates released on Sunday, with $32.92 million or so for the weekend and a total to date of $222.7 million. Django Unchained will post an impressive second place with $30.7 million and a per theater average over $10,000. Finally, Les Miserables is set for a little over $28 million, for a six-day total of $67.5 million. With those three films bringing in $90 million between, and plenty of strength in depth, 2012 will finish on a winning note.
More...
December 28th, 2012
There are three wide releases this weekend; however, all of them were released on Christmas day, so we have a few box office numbers to look at. Les Miserables was a surprise winner on Christmas day, while both Django Unchained and Parental Guidance also beat expectations, which bodes well for their perform this weekend. Even so, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will likely remain in top spot as it crosses $200 million domestically. Compared to last year the box office looks pretty good. No film topped $30 million last year, but The Hobbit should get to that mark this year. However, last year seven films topped $10 million, while only six will do so this year. 2013 has a shot at ending on a winning note, but it should be close.
More...
December 27th, 2012
This year, Christmas fell on a really awkward day and compounded with the smart decision for some studios to close the entire week, dealing with the weekend box office numbers is a little trickier this year. We are still stuck with a mixture of final numbers and studio estimates, but since we won't get absolute final numbers till likely January 2nd, we should at least talk about the numbers we have. We won't be able to compare the full weekend to last week or last year, because we don't have the full weekend numbers. But since most of the films failed to match expectations, things look grim.
More...
December 20th, 2012
Next weekend is a mess. Let's be upfront about that right now. There are three new wide releases opening next weekend, but all three films are opening on Christmas Day, which lands on the Tuesday. Of these three films, both Django Unchained and Les Miserables have a shot at top spot, while Parental Guidance is clearly counter-programming. Django Unchained has nearly perfect reviews and some of the loudest buzz we've heard for any film opening this winter. As such, it is the target film in this week's box office prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for Django Unchained.
Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), regardless if they going over or under, will win a copy of Army Wives: Season Six, Part One and Part Two on DVD.
Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay!
More...
December 19th, 2012
For the next week, starting tonight and running till Christmas day, there are eight films opening wide, or at least wide enough to predict they will enter the top ten. Despite that level of competition, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will very likely remain in top spot. Jack Reacher looks to be the best of the new releases, at least for the weekend. Meanwhile, This is 40 probably won't start as fast, but Judd Apatow's films tend to have really good legs. Monsters, Inc. is debuting in 3D tonight, but is destined to be a midlevel hit and nothing more. The Guilt Trip is also opening tonight, but I'm not sure it has the buzz to even be a midlevel hit. The final new release of the weekend is Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, but with an opening theater count of just 800, it will struggle just to reach to the top ten. And because Christmas lands on the Tuesday, and we won't have another weekend prediction column till Friday, we need to talk about the three Christmas day releases, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, and Parental Guidance. Last year, Christmas day landed on the Sunday, which makes the comparisons between weekends nearly impossible. I'm going to assume 2012 is going to come out ahead, mainly because they had nothing to compare to The Hobbit, so as long as this year's new releases are as strong as last years holdovers, victory is a safe bet.
More...
December 1st, 2012
November was a strong month and left 2012 with a very easy path to a new all time record. There was only one major miss the entire month, Rise of the Guardians, while The Silver Linings Playbook was pulled from wide release at the last minute, so it is a little hard to judge its box office performance. On the positive side, Skyfall might top original expectations by $100 million. All this December has to do is maintain pace with last December to ensure 2012 sets the new record. I would like to say that will be easy to do, but I really don't know. Last year, there was only one $200 million hit, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, plus a few others that reached $100 million, so the bar isn't set too high. This year, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is expected to at least come close to $300 million. Some think it will earn more than $400 million. However, it could also be the last film to make $100 million till February. December is normally a very good month to release a film, but the release schedule is so messed up that it makes it very hard to predict what will happen. There appears to be just ten films opening truly wide this month (I'm getting mixed signals on a few of them). That's a really light schedule for a month and a light schedule tends to help maximize the box office potential for individual films. However, eight of these films open wide within a seven-day period. That's insane. There's no way all of those films will find an audience and there's a chance that due to the competition, none of them will. Let's hope the situation isn't as bad as that, but there are some serious reasons to be concerned for most new releases coming out this month.
More...
